The Doctor-Tyler Family
by MakingShortStoriesLong
Summary: Rose and the MetaCrisis Doctor are happily married, living in Pete's World, and working at Torchwood. Follow their lives as they have a child and raise him with the TARDIS. As canon compliant as I can get it while still counting the deleted TARDIS coral scene. More like one-shots than a continuous story. Please review and comment ideas!
1. Bad Wolf Bay

Rose watched the TARDIS dematerialize - for the last time, she reminded herself. The last time it had been the last time, she hadn't known she would never see it again. But this time, it was official, a fact, a fixed moment in her time stream. She wasn't sure if it was better this way, or worse.

At her side, the new Doctor held her hand, a golden colored chunk of TARDIS coral in his other. She wasn't entirely sure of him yet, but he felt right. She didn't know if she could ever quite think of him as the same man, but maybe he was. At least, he had been up until ten minutes ago. It was where he went from there that she was concerned about.

He was looking at the ground, just watching the sand as the engine noises faded out. His expression of sadness looked disproportionately strong, Rose thought, for something he'd chosen himself. Even if he was leaving the TARDIS and Donna, who he was clearly great friends with, he would grow a new TARDIS soon, and he had her.

Behind them, her mum cleared her throat. "We weren't exactly dropped off somewhere convenient," Jackie said. "You remember, the town's a long walk inland, and then we have to find a phone. I don't have signal on my mobile, do you?"

Rose shook her head, clearing her mind. "No," she said, wincing at the croak her voice made. The Doctor squeezed her hand, and changed his expression in that quick way he had. "Better start walking!" he said.

XxxxxxxXxxxxxxxXxxxxxxxXxxxxxxxX

In the town, Jackie called Pete and explained as briefly as they could what had happened. He was relieved that Jackie and Rose were alright, and sorry to hear Mickey wouldn't be coming back to Torchwood but happy he'd gotten home. He spoke briefly to a mentally and emotionally drained Rose, and told her he was happy for her and excited to meet the Doctor again, even if he was confused about how he had gotten there. He was sending a zeppelin to pick them up, and they found a hotel to spend the night in.

Jackie was taking charge of everything, and Rose was grateful. They'd all been through a lot, and Rose knew she should stay strong - if she was going to fall to pieces, it could wait until she was safe at home. Normally she was good at that, but it had all been too much. Even the Doctor, if he was the Doctor, was in a state of shock. He hadn't let go of her hand until they reached the door of his room - Jackie had gotten a separate one for herself and Rose - and he hadn't spoken except in low mumbles to himself. He alternately studied the world with the same alertness as always, plus a new suspicious, investigatory air, and let his eyes blur out of focus as though he was looking inside himself. That was when he looked the most confused.

Once Rose had had a shower and felt more awake and alive, she went to see the Doctor. She wasn't sure if she should call him something else - John Smith came to mind, but even when he'd used that name before she'd had difficulty calling him by it. He looked like the Doctor; both of them did, as though the name meant him and only him. Maybe he could use John Smith on identification and things, but unless he proved to be some one completely different from the man she loved, Rose couldn't imagine calling him anything but "Doctor".

She knocked on the door softly. It was opened almost immediately by the Doctor, who smiled hugely at the sight of Rose. She couldn't help grinning back. "Hello, Rose," he greeted her.

"Hi," she said. "Uh, can I come in?"

"Yeah, sure," the Doctor said, stepping out of the way and closing the door behind her. As she passed by the bathroom, she noticed a faint glow coming from the sink. The Doctor had filled it with water and left the TARDIS coral submerged there.

Rose sat down on one of the single beds in the room, and the Doctor sat down beside her, leaving a few inches between them. Just after he sat down, he put his hands up to his face, covering his eyes and rubbing his forehead like he had a headache.

"Are you alright?" Rose asked. He nodded wearily.

"Of course I am," he said. "It's just... So empty. And so still. Like the world's stopped in its tracks." He hesitated a moment, giving Rose time to look confused. "You remember, when we first met, and I told you I could feel the turn of the Earth? I could feel the orbit of planets, the movement of life around me, and the bending time shaped by all of them. And now... It's all gone." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "I didn't realize it right away, but on the beach, after the TARDIS left, it felt like there was something wrong with me, and I finally figured out what it is. I can't feel time in flux around me any more, and the world is so, STILL. How do you stand that? It's moving, I know that it's moving, but I can't FEEL it."

Rose shrugged her shoulders. "You'll get used to it, I guess. I mean, I think it would be weird to be able to feel that. I'm not sure how I could walk if I could feel the ground spinning under my feet."

The Doctor tipped his head in aknowledgement of her point. "I know, I'll get used to it. But there's other things I didn't realize before about humans. Breathing's gotten harder. Not a lot, but I notice it now. And my eyesight isn't as good - my right eye is worse than my left, and things are blurry close up."

"Maybe you need glasses," Rose suggested. The Doctor reached into his pocket, and for a second she thought he was going to pull out his sonic screwdriver, before remembering that the other Doctor had it. Instead he pulled out his black glasses and slid them on his face. "Better?" she asked.

"Not at all. These are fakes." He tapped one lens. "That's just normal glass."

"Why do you have them then?" She had always thought he needed reading glasses, with how he was always whipping them out to look at things.

"Well... They just kinda look cool." Rose snorted. Typical Doctor.

"Are you going to be all right?" Rose asked after a few moments of silence. She set one hand on his arm.

"Of course I will," the Doctor said. "I just need time." He sighed. "Poor Donna."

"What is it?" Rose asked.

"The MetaCrisis won't be as easy for her. It was a two-way exchange. I got her human biology and a little of her... perspective of the world, and she got my memories and a Time Lord mind. By now, she probably doesn't remember me." Rose didn't know what to say. "I know what she would say, too. I know exactly how both sides of that conversation would go." He swallowed; Rose realized he was choking up. "I - the Doctor would have erased her memory by now, before the knowledge could burn out my mind - her mind, that is. And if she ever remembers, she'll die."

Rose was worried, now. Her Doctor, the one with her, was upset, but she was sure the other one would be worse. After all, he was the one who was actually there, who made Donna forget. "Do you think you'll be okay? The other Doctor, I mean."

Her Doctor hesitated. "He'll try. He might not be at his best, but he won't ever give up." He took Rose's hand in his.

"Rose," he said, looking her in the eyes, "listen to me. We can't worry about him. He chose this, to move on, because it was better than any other alternative. Both of us know this is the only way, because if you'd gone with him, besides the fact that I don't think I could live without you, it would kill him to have you stay with him and then one day, not be there anymore. Know that he won't ever forget you, but thinking about him or wondering where he is right now can't bring us anything but pain." His deep brown eyes were full of pain, and sorrow and sympathy- deeper than that, empathy - seemed to create a bridge from his eyes to Rose's, which were shockingly dry as she turned it all over in her mind.

"I hope he does move on," Rose said softly. "Even if he can't forget me, I hope he's happy." There was another pause for Rose to look down at the floor, where the gray carpet was peeling up in strings. "I love you," Rose said.

"Quite right, too." She squeezed his hand. "Rose Tyler, I love you, too."


	2. The More Things Change

_The more things change, the more they stay the same." -Old Proverb_

"Spanner," the Doctor said, holding his hand out to Rose, who picked up a wrench and handed it to him. He was crouched low over a complicated system of wires - a universal translator, like the one in his old TARDIS. Rose sat an arms length away where the table was clear for her paperwork, one of the few drawbacks about her job at Torchwood.

They were in the yellow spare room that they used as a nursery for the TARDIS coral. The coral itself was in a large aquarium directly across from the window so it would get the best sunlight possible. The table they sat at was littered with bits of alien tech Torchwood hadn't needed and TARDIS blueprints the Doctor had drawn. They had to have a console and a container for when the coral matured, and almost every day the Doctor put in at least an hour at this table, making their 'dream home' a reality.

He looked so cute, intensely focused as he was, with his hair wildly messy from the times he'd run his hands through it. He was working so hard to be ready when the baby TARDIS coral grew up. Rose tried for a moment to remember if she'd ever seen him this focused and driven before the MetaCrisis. She fancied she could remember the expression on his face a few times in the past, but always in brief spurts when he was doing something important and technical while trying to save the world.

He hadn't had the chance to save the world in a long time now. He'd certainly contributed - Torchwood had dipped it's fingers in the militaries and governments of most nations in the world, and Dr. John Smith was one of, probably _the, _best man in their organization; but because Torchwood was so secretive, and they couldn't have anyone looking too closely into who he was, not many people knew the true inventor and diplomat behind so many great achievements. Which was fine. The Doctor had never been one to stand there while people threw him a parade. But that used to be because he had other places to be and things to do, and Rose couldn't help thinking that at the moment, no matter what he said, he wouldn't have minded a parade. He deserved a Nobel prize at the very least. He was used to being the great one man show, with his companion running behind, pointing out the obvious things so that he could change them into something no one else would ever call 'obvious.' Now he was stuck in a lab or an office, working on alien and cyber tech at work and his TARDIS at home, praying for the coral to grow faster so he could get back to living.

One thing hadn't changed, though-

"Are you supposed to be working on those wires while their live like that?" Rose asked, leaning over his shoulder.

"Probably not," he muttered, pulling up a staple with a flat-headed screw driver.

"Well, if you're going to electrocute yourself," Rose said, "warn me first, and I'll take the chicken out and order Chinese."

"That sounds good actually," the Doctor said.

Rose looked indignant. "I spent hours on that chicken." The Doctor looked up, a host of cringe-worthy expressions arrayed on his face.

"I didn't mean I don't want chicken. Chicken sounds great."

She laughed. "I picked it up at the store ready made." He laughed with relief.

"Don't scare me like that," he said, still looking at her. "You're too good an actress. You looked like your mother." She scowled and leaned over to swat his arm, but he leaned out of reach, and they both nearly fell off before righting themselves, laughing as she finally succeeded in hitting him, and returning to their individual work.

She could still make him smile.

_A/N - This is set after Bad Wolf Bay Part 2. Please bear with me while I try to arrange my story in the right order_


	3. Progression

_A/N - Two years after Bad Wolf Bay..._

Rose pushed the door open into the yellow nursery room where the Doctor was hard at work on.. something. Although the room was technically a place for the TARDIS coral to grow into a living, time-sentient creature capable of carrying them through the time stream, it had also become the Doctor's workshop. Mostly it was because he had to build a complicated set of circuits and containers to put the living coral inside, but he frequently brought home random space debris from Torchwood and analyzed it in there too. Often times, Rose was his partner studying their homework, but the Time Lord science required to build a TARDIS mostly went over her head, and she was reduced to handing him tools and cleaning up. No matter what though, it was their favorite thing to do together, and probably the most frequently used room in the house.

Today, the Doctor was hunched over a table, holding his sonic screwdriver in one hand over a sheet of metal. His suit jacket was cast to the side across the table, and he was wearing a maroon T shirt. He reached to the side while still looking down, grabbing for a bolt and a screw.

The screwdriver wasn't quite as good as his original, but it worked well. He'd made it as soon as he started working at Torchwood, basically as soon as his identification and backstory had been falsified, out of a sonic pen he'd found deep in the pocket of his blue suit jacket. Try as he might, it wouldn't do wood, but he had added a useful little laser setting that could solder metal together - inspired, he said, by an old enemy and older friend called the Master.

Rose took a minute to look at the coral growing in the aquarium. It was a large aquarium, filled with several gallons of water and the slightly luminous golden TARDIS coral, directly opposite the window where it would get plenty of sunlight. This, then, was what she had looked at when she became the Bad Wolf. Hazy memories played in her mind like old video tapes, missing great chunks of film. The Time Stream was barely flowing into this coral, so it was perfectly safe to look at, but the Doctor said that in a few years it would come into it's full power, and they would need the TARDIS shell to be ready by then.

Rose wandered from the aquarium to where the Doctor was working. She looked over his shoulder at the shiny metal, and sat down on the stool beside him. She reached across the table, stretching for a piece of metal that had fallen out of the atmosphere recently, and picked up a nearby magnifying glass to examine it.

She was looking at the metal, but she wasn't thinking about it. She knew she couldn't get anymore information out of it anyway, not with just a magnifier; they'd used microscopes in the lab already. She was thinking about the Doctor.

She was always thinking about him, but their lives had been comfortable and together enough that she'd never really done this kind of thinking. But a new-ish girl at work had asked her today, "Is Doctor Smith your boyfriend?" It had sounded like a middle-school way of putting it to Rose, but it still made her pause. They were a couple. They kissed, they had date night, they shared a bed - but they didn't call themselves anything. They didn't say date night, or "This is my girlfriend, Rose." If he brought her flowers or she made him dinner, it was sweet and loving but not exceptional - it was just them._ Really,_ she thought, _it's like we're married._ But that was what worried her. Everything was perfect, or as close as it could be while the TARDIS was still growing. But the Doctor had always been slow about acting on his feelings, about committing to anything, and besides that, maybe he had some different, Gallifreyan custom that he assumed was the same on Earth. She should ask him. She would ask him. But not just now, because now he was saying, "Rose, could you pass me those yellow wires?" while his face was still concentrated on his work, and he was so cute and focused, and she passed him his wires and thought, _Maybe it's better this way._

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_One week earlier..._

The Doctor had bought the ring. He'd brought another ring Rose had, that he'd seen her wear and knew fit her well, and picked the perfect diamond in the same size. The band was thin and gold, with one large, sparkling diamond in the center and two smaller stones on either side. It was given to him in a black case with a gray cloth interior, and he tucked it in his inside breast pocket and worried about when he should give it to her.

He'd never done a proper proposal before. He'd been married, yes, a long time ago, but it was very different. He'd forgotten much of it, but knew that the parts he remembered were only the best; he'd let time claim the bad memories, and could only vaguely recall having divorced her sometime before Susan was born.

Unbidden, some of Donna's emotions surfaced in his mind. He was going to propose, he was going to get married! A giddy grin spread across his face as he walked back to his and Rose's flat. Yes, he imagined screaming, and then corrected himself. Rose would be the one screaming yes, hopefully. Unless he beat him to the proposal. Or didn't want to marry him.

It was this kind of uncertainty that delayed him. Fortunately for him, Rose also kept her silence. Actually, she may even have forgotten her own uncertainty - she'd decided that, as much as her mum would like to see her have a proper wedding and kids and all, she was good as she was.

She was also lying to herself, trying not to rock the boat, and probably wouldn't breath into he asked her to marry him.

And so they continued their lives with new unspoken weights, and neither of them noticed the other's tension, too preoccupied with their own.

A/N - _I'm still getting used to , so I haven't figured out yet if I can and how I would change the order of the chapters. I want Bad Wolf Bay to come first, followed by this and then another one before the main group of chapters I published to begin with. I'm not really on here a lot - I spend more time on Wattpad - but I've always loved reading from this site, so I'm sure I'll eventually get used to writing on it. REVIEWS ARE __**GREATLY APRECIATED!**_


	4. Circuit Boards & Coral

A/N - Sorry, I forgot my password and it took me awhile to get around to resetting it. Anyway, sorry I never update. I HOPE YOU ENJOY!

_One month later..._

It was an average afternoon in Rose and the Doctor's flat. They were in the nursery-workshop, piecing together circuit boards for the new TARDIS while discussing the movie they'd gone out to see last night. The Doctor thought it was brilliant; Rose thought the special effects looked cheesy and fake.

"They did they best with what they had," the Doctor protested, screwing a bolt in with his sonic. "It's still early days, movies will get better in a century or two."

"Doctor, you could see people's feet under the costumes. That's more like a movie from a century _ago_." Rose brought her face down close to the boards to watch the bolt she was trying to secure, using her own sonic screwdriver. It had been a present from the Doctor for her last birthday, but while it had a good signal strength, it was constantly breaking down at the slightest provocation. As a result, she tended to use it about three inches from her face to keep an eye on it, even though the Doctor said that wouldn't help.

"Well, the plot was good, at least," the Doctor said. He looked over Rose's blond head. He hesitated, thinking of the ring he still had in his pocket. Ever since he'd bought it, he'd spent every minute with her on a tense wire, and every minute away wondering why he hadn't just asked already. But then he would see her again, and he would bite his tongue and take his hand out of his pocket, and talk and laugh away without noticing the sort of hopeful expression in her eyes.

For Rose's part, she still worried a little that the Doctor could never commit. He'd never been able to before. Even if he could say "I love you" - and she took every opportunity to make him say it - he might never want to get married. But Rose had seen the receipt. Buried deep in his bigger-on-the-inside pockets, while she was doing the wash, she had found a receipt for a diamond ring, and just hoped that he would show it to her soon.

"How's the coral doing?" Rose asked. They both set down their screwdrivers and turned to look at it, the golden wavy lines folded over each other and resting on the bottom of the aquarium. On a nice day, it looked like it was just bathing in the sunlight coming in the window; but on a cloudy one like today, they could see it's faint luminescence. "It's getting bigger," Rose noted.

"Oh, the size doesn't matter too much," the Doctor said. "What's important is that it gets strong enough to hold the Vortex. Well, strong enough to channel the Vortex."

"Can you hear it?" Rose asked. "With your old one, you always said you could hear her. Is this coral telepathic too?"

"It's - faint. Probably because it's still growing." The Doctor didn't want to admit he'd lost some of his telepathic ability. Not all of it, but everything was less sharp than it used to be.

"Do you think -" Rose pursed her lips. "Do you think I'll ever be able to hear it?"

"With practice, yeah, maybe. It'll help that this one is yours, too. She'll want to communicate with you."

Rose smiled widely at that. _Their_ TARDIS. "As long as it doesn't bring back Bad Wolf." Rose laughed, or tried to; it was always a hard thing to talk about. It had taken her a few years to piece it together fully, but she knew the truth now. It was her fault the Doctor had regenerated. But then again, it was also she who saved him. "That couldn't happen through the glass, could it? When it gets stronger?"

"It could, but it shouldn't. There'll be a window of time when it's strong enough to encapsulate in the TARDIS shell but still not channeling all the force of the vortex. I'm still doing calculations actually." He scratched the back of his head, spiking his hair further up. "I've never done this before, and I keep finding different variables to account for, like the energy in this universe. And then sometimes it seems to be completely random. But there should be a time, two to four years from now, when it's mature enough to take out of the aquarium but not dangerous."

Rose was biting her lower lip as he spoke, studying the coral. He was studying her face. And right at that moment, with the golden light on her face and her blond hair all back in a messy pigtail and her brown eyes so fully of concern, he was struck like lightening by the fact that he knew they would never be apart, but there was still something she was waiting for. He reached into his suit's inside pocket.

Rose saw him in her peripheral vision, engaged in the familiar motion that usually meant he was retrieving his screwdriver. So she wasn't paying attention until he stood up and smoothly knelt on one knew before her. Her heart skipped a beat.

The Doctor held the small black box open, revealing the sparkling ring. "Rose Tyler," he began. His mind raced. He hadn't thought this far yet. What did he say next? But some voice in the back of his head, some last vestige of Donna perhaps, yelled _You idiot!_ and told him the four little words he had to say. "Will you marry me?"

Rose needed only an instant to take in the scene: the wild hair, the rumpled suit, the tiny beads of sweat on his forehead, the way the golden coral backlit her Doctor like an angel. She wanted to remember it perfectly forever.

"Yes," she answered quietly, although the one word filled the room; and she said it with certainty. It wasn't the shrieked excited _yes! _of a girl who's been unsure and anticipating this for weeks, although she had been, and it wasn't a sarcastic or laughing yes of a woman who didn't need a proposal to know they were together forever, which she very well could have been. It was a simple, assertive, accepting yes, and as she said it her eyes sparkled brighter the diamonds in her ring.

The Doctor's grin spread across his face so widely, it looked like it would break it in half. She started grinning too, from ear to ear, and they stood up at the same time, and the Doctor awkwardly held the ring out to the side as they kissed like fools in love.

When they finally stopped, the Doctor held the box open again, and smoothly slid the ring onto Rose's waiting finger. She lifted it closer to her face for a brief examination, the Doctor's nose still inches away from her's. Then she suddenly ran her fingers through his hair and pulled him in closer, and he dropped the box on the floor in his haste to grab onto her.

It was a long time before the circuit boards got any more attention.

A/N - SO I finally figured out how to rearrange the order of the chapters, so this story makes sense now! Yay! However - there is a bit of a time gap after this. There SHOULD be a wedding, Jackie and Pete's reactions, etc. but I haven't actually written them yet. Hopefully I'll do that soon. Sorry.


	5. Names

"Doctor?" Rose Tyler called from the couch in their living room.

"Yes?" he replied, walking in from the kitchen. He wasn't really the Doctor, the near-immortal Time Lord who lived in another dimension, but a metacrisis clone. Still, he, Rose, and everyone who knew the true story treated him the same as they had always treated the Doctor, and considered him the same person. He was going by Doctor John Tyler these days, but everyone still called him Doctor; the story, as he had once explained off the top of his head when questioned, was that as a child "the Doctor" had been his nickname, and once he had his PhD it stuck for life, going so far as to ask to be addressed as such by strangers.

"So, I was thinking," Rose said, "what about names? For the baby. We haven't really talked about what we're going to call him, yet."

"Do you have any ideas?" the Doctor asked, sitting down beside her. He put an arm over her shoulders and drew her in closer.

"Not really," she admitted. "But we have to come up with something."

"Well, we could call him Pete, after your dad, or Jack, if we want to name him after somebody."

"I don't think naming him Jack would be such a good idea. He might take after him." She turned a bit to the side so she could see the Doctor's face. "And I don't want to name him after Dad." She thought for a minute. "We could always call him after you."

"What, call him John?" the Doctor asked.

"No, I meant Doctor. But then, he might be teased in school," Rose said thoughtfully. "But at least you'd be a good role model for your namesake."

"So if "Doctor" is too weird, I suppose naming him in Gallifreyan is out of the question?"

"Probably. But it depends on the name."

"Hmm..." The Doctor leaned his head back against the couch and shut his eyes. "Earth names that I like. We could call him Wolfgang, or Harry, or Leonardo."

"I said not weird."

"Harry isn't weird."

"Yes, but I never really liked that name." Rose thought another minute. "What about Mathew, or Kyle, or Edward?"

"Not Kyle. Mathew and Edward aren't bad, though," the Doctor said, sitting up right again.

"Mathew Tyler. Edward Tyler," Rose said, trying out the full sound of the names.

"Mathew Edward Tyler. Edward Mathew Tyler."

"No, not together," Rose decided. "Just one or the other."

"I don't think I like either of them," the Doctor said. "Maybe as a middle name. Can you think of anything else?"

"Norman. Fredrick. James. Carl." Rose stopped. "The only one of those I like is James."

"James Edward Tyler. Not bad," the Doctor remarked.

"We could call him Jamie," Rose suggested.

"Do you remember Jamie from the Blitz, the boy in the gas mask?" the Doctor asked.

Rose's expression changed to one of recognition. "Of course! Do you not want to name him that, then?"

Thee Doctor considered for a moment. "No, it's still a good name," he said. "He was a nice kid. And that was the time everybody lived."

"Just that once," Rose said softly. The Doctor nudged her.

"It's okay," he said, softly as well. Then, louder and more cheerfully, "So! James Edward Tyler, right?"

"Actually," Rose stated, turning even more so she could look the Doctor in the eyes, "I already picked out a middle name. " The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "I did want to name him after you, some how. How does James Theta Tyler sound?"

The Doctor grinned. "Rose Tyler, I think it sounds brilliant."

"Well, Doctor Tyler," she said, smiling back at him, "I am brilliant."

The Doctor laughed. "Don't I know it! How long have you been thinking about this?"

"Ever since you told me about your old nickname. Your real name is just too hard to say, and I'm not naming a baby "the Doctor." Theta just sounded perfect."

"You know," he said more solemnly, "the TARDIS should be ready in just a year or two. By James Theta's first birthday, we should be able to travel again."

Now it was Rose's turn to really grin. Just a few days ago the Doctor had been telling her he thought the TARDIS still had years to go, and now they could practically set a date to leave. "Did you hear that Jamie?" she asked, looking down at the baby bump in her stomach. "Mummy and Daddy are going to take you to see the stars." She smiled again at her husband, who reached a hand around her head and pulled her in for a kiss.

_I just want to note here that I have published this story on Wattpad, and I hope that's okay. It is my original plot using characters created by Russell T Davies and BBC. I read the Guidelines, but I'm still unclear on if publishing my own work on two separate sites is allowed._


	6. Homework

Dear Mrs. Tyler,

Recently Jamie turned in an assignment entirely in made up characters I have never seen before. I can't tell if he made up a language or turned in a page of doodles and tried to pass it off as homework. The assignment was to write two paragraphs, one about what one of his parent's jobs is, and one about what he wants to be when he grows up. If he will rewrite and submit the assignment tomorrow, I will not take off points. Please have him finish this tonight and bring it in to me.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Cloister, Third Year teacher.

"Jamie!" Rose called. Her son was in the kitchen, looking for something to eat but not finding much, as his dad still hadn't returned with the groceries. He emerged holding a stalk of celery in one hand and a banana in the other. His mother eyed the celery suspiciously. "Did you wash that?" she asked.

"No," Jamie replied innocently. "Should I?"

"I'll do it." He gave her the celery and followed her back into the kitchen. "So your teacher emailed me about your homework from the weekend. Do you still have it?"

"Somewhere," he said, and started sifting through his messy backpack in search of it. Rose was washing and cutting up the celery at the sink when the door of the flat opened, and the Doctor walked in carrying several bags of groceries. "I'm back," he announced, just as Jamie exclaimed, "Found it!"

"Found what?" the Doctor asked, setting all the bags on the table next to Jamie's backpack.

"My homework. Mummy said there was a problem with it."

"Well, let's have look." He took the slightly-wrinkled page from his son's hands and looked it over, grinning broadly. The entire page, front and back, was covered in neat circular Gallifreyan. The only English were the words "James Tyler, 18 November," at the top of the page. "Nice work, Jamie. Very nice work."

"What does it say?" Rose asked, looking at it while handing Jamie his snack. The Doctor had tried to teach her to read Galllifreyan a few times, but very little of it had stuck with her.

"Why don't you read it out loud for us?" the Doctor suggested to his son, snatching a piece of celery. "In English," he prompted.

Jamie took back the paper and began to read. "My parents work for Torchwood, investigating alien technology and promoting peace between planets. My dad's job used to be saving the universe, but he says that's just a hobby now. Sometimes I get to go to work with them on the week ends, and I work in the lab with Mummy and Daddy or help my Granddad in the office. They usually leave me in the office when they have to investigate in the field, which means a place outside the lab with suspected alien involvement or a space ship crash, but I got to go once and it was really interesting. I even got to use a machine that goes "ding" that Daddy made.

When I grow up, I want to be just like my parents. I will travel in the TARDIS and save all the worlds I land on. I will fight off the villains and save the innocent. I will explore all of time and space, and one day I will be a hero, just like Mummy and Daddy." The little boy finished proudly, looking to his parents for approval. His parents shared a look of mixed astonishment and amusement - most of the astonishment contributed by Rose, and much of the amusement from the Doctor.

"Well, some one's been paying more attention to bedtime stories than I thought," the Doctor said.

"Clearly," Rose said. "I suppose, between the two of us, we've already told most of the good ones."

The Doctor nodded gravely. "We're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Just two nights ago I found myself reduced to telling the story of the absorber- remember, that Linda group?"

"And the guy trying to get to you through me and Mum?" Rose asked.

The little boy looked back and forth between his parents, remembering the story. It hadn't been one of the more exciting stories, but it was funny hearing them talk about remembering it. It proved it was real. He knew all kinds of unusual things happened - he'd traveled in the TARDIS after all, though he was no where near ready (or tall enough) to fly it - but he'd rarely been anywhere DANGEROUS. His parents said they were waiting until he was older. The Doctor frequently commented that the TARDIS was excited for him to get off the jump seat and fly her; she knew he could take her into all sorts of trouble, and a third person would take her halfway to being flown properly.

"Well, you know," the Doctor said thoughtfully, "we could always go somewhere. Write a new bedtime story."

"Yeah!" Jamie cheered, his eyes lighting up. He jumped out if his seat and raced to the TARDIS, in it's customary corner of the living room.

"Ah-ah-ah. Not so fast, mister," Rose said, following and placing a hand on his shoulder. "You need to rewrite your paper, in English this time."

"You should probably take out the bit about flying around saving the universe, too, unless you want to be known as the crazy kid at school," the Doctor added.

Jamie nodded. "I will. But can't we go first? We can come back in a minute. I'll do it then!"

The Doctor looked at Rose beseechingly. "He has a point."

"No," she said firmly. "Even if it's only a minute here, it could be days for us, and by then we'll forget all about it. It'll take you ten minutes. Go do your homework."

Jamie looked up to his dad, but he shook his head no. "Go do your homework. We can leave when you're finished." His son nodded a little sadly and ran out of the room - he seemed to run everywhere, Rose reflected, and she didn't know if it was just his age or a trait he'd inherited from his father.

"Aren't there any stories we haven't told him?" Rose asked.

"You told him about New Earth, right? And Chloe Webber." Rose nodded. "Well..." The Doctor thought for a minute. "Oh! Bad Wolf!"

"You never told him about that?" Rose asked.

"Well, I don't want to give him nightmares. Daleks, regeneration, and almost losing you in one go - that could be terrifying."

"It was," Rose agreed. "But he would love to hear it. And I don't think Jamie gets nightmares anymore - he hasn't since he was two years old."

"Maybe we can tell him tonight." The Doctor took Rose's hand and pulled her in against his chest. She looked up into his dark brown eyes, almost the same as his son's.

"You can't have told him ALL your stories," she said.

"All the ones with you, and a few with Donna."

"You should tell us some others, sometime," she said quietly, resting her head on his chest. "Together."

"I think I will." The Doctor reached under her chin, and tilted her head up. They kissed. The Doctor and Rose kissed, in their flat, in front of their TARDIS, while their son finished his homework.

"Mummy, I've finished!" The two broke apart to check on Jamie in the kitchen. Rose read the paper over his shoulder. "That was fast," she commented as she continued to read. "Good job, Jamie!"

"We can go now?" He asked excitedly.

His parents laughed. "Yeah, we can go now. Go get in the TARDIS!" The little boy seemed to fly off his stool and through the blue doors. The Doctor took Rose's hand, and they ran after their son to their next adventure. It would be the bedtime story of tomorrow, and none of them doubted that it would end anyway other than happily ever after.

It was better with three.

_Reviews are appreciated!_


	7. Jamie's Journal

Hello,

I'm not sure who will be reading this, so I'm not sure what I should write, but I'm at Grandma's house and not doing anything so I'm just going to try to write everything.

My teacher from last year, Mrs. Cloister, made everyone buy a notebook and told us to keep a journal. She said she wouldn't read them, but she wanted us to have them to work on writing and to remember things with. We were supposed to start writing when we got them a few weeks ago, but I was busy. Now school's out, and I've been spending days with Grandma and Tony while my parents are at work.

Sometimes I go with my parents to work, but they said I should spend time with my grandma and my "uncle." Mum thought she was really funny when she said that, because it's technically true, but Tony's more like my cousin. He's 12. He's my mom's younger brother, and she's 30 or something. I'm not sure about her age exactly, or Grandma or Granddad.

I know my dad's age, sort of. He's either 914 or 9 years old, depending on if you ask him or Mum. Unless you're a stranger, then he's 35 and his name's Dr. John Tyler instead if just the Doctor. My mum's name is always Rose Marion Tyler.

"Hello, I'm the Doctor and this is my wife, Rose Tyler, and my son Jamie." That's what Dad says to all the aliens we meet. He likes to use Mum's first and last names together as often as he can.

Mrs. Cloister probably wanted us to write English, so I'll try to do some of that in with my Gallifreyan. So now if anyone besides my dad and I ever tries to read this, they'll understand this sentence at least. Hello!

My full name's James Theta Tyler. I'm six years old, but I'll be seven in a few months. My Dad knew some one a long time ago who had my name, too, Jamie, but that was a long time ago and Mum never met him, so I'm not technically named after him. I was named after a little kid who my dad rescued in World War 2, during the Blitz. I made a game up out if the story. It's called gasmask zombie, or Are You My Mummy. I call it both. I asked Mummy once about why she named me that, and she said it was because he was a very lucky little kid for surviving everything, and that nobody died on that adventure. I've never seen anyone die because I never get to go anywhere dangerous, but Mummy and Daddy have seen lots of death. Daddy still gets sad about it sometimes, and I think he blames himself. Maybe he killed someone. I don't know because he leaves out all the worst parts of his stories, but sometimes when I'm supposed to be asleep I actually sit in the hallway to hear if my parents wake up. It's not often, but Daddy has nightmares sometimes, and then he and Mum talk. He says it was better before he had to sleep so much.

I don't really understand that part. I know that somewhere out there is another one of my dad, who looks just like him and has his memories and loves Mum, but I don't really understand the story about it. It's something about regeneration, which is also really confusing, but doesn't matter since Daddy can't do it anymore.

I know all this because I've been asking about bedtime stories since I was a year old, and I've heard all about Mum's adventures with Daddy, and some of the ones about Martha. He talks a lot about a lady called Donna, who was his best friend. He sometimes starts talking funny when he does this, and says "I" when he means her, even though he's also using "I" for himself, the Doctor. Those stories are the most confusing because of that, but Donna was a very funny person, so I don't mind.

I'm going into fifth next year at school. I skipped over most of first and second years, and I'm skipping fourth, but Dad says I'll slow down to learn more like a normal kid this year. Mum was really surprised when I was a baby because I guess I started talking and walking easier than most kids. I think I should go back to staying at home and learning, but Mum says I should get a normal education for a few more years. The kids at school are pretty boring though, so I want to get out of there quick. Weekends are the best, because we almost always take a trip in the TARDIS. I'm learning to talk to her telepathically. Dad explained to Mum while he didn't think I was listening that I'm mostly human, just learning a bit faster and a little telepathic - enough to connect with the TARDIS. He said he thought my kids one day will grow up like normal human kids, but might be able to keep the telepathic link as long as they grow up around the TARDIS.

Of course if I have kids they'll grow up around the TARDIS. I'm never going to stop flying her, as soon as I learn how. But I don't think I want kids, because it means I'd have to get married to a girl.

Grandma wants me to go with her and Tony somewhere. I have to go. Until sometime later,

-Jamie Tyler

_So this is kind of babbling I guess, but that is about what I do in my own journal, and I don't imagine a six year old boy's attention span is greater than mine. What do you think?_


	8. Lessons with Dad

The Doctor pushed the TARDIS door in slightly and peeped through to see his son, standing at the console with his hands lightly resting on the edge. He'd thought he would find him here. The TARSIS had always been an extension of the Doctor-Tyler family home, and Jamie had been wandering it's halls, with and often without permission from his parents, ever since he could walk. It wasn't unusual to find him in the swimming pool, or messing around with the Zero Room, or in the slowly growing library, or just wandering around, but lately he'd been frequenting the console room. This was at least the fourth time the Doctor had caught him staring at the array of buttons, knobs, levers, thingies, and whatsits with longing, his fingers itching to touch them but holding back, partially in fear and respect of his parents, but mostly from the simple common sense that flying a Time Machine with no instructions was a good way to get lost forever.

"Jamie," the Doctor called softly. The boy's head turned to his father. "Hey, Daddy."

"Do you remember what day it is? You look like you're about to escape into a different one," the Doctor teased. Jamie hastily pulled his hands off the console. The Doctor, now standing beside him, placed a hand on his shoulder. "Happy birthday, James Theta Tyler."

"Thanks, Dad."

"So you're eight now, eh? Big year. You know," the Doctor said, looking at Jamie sideways, "back on Gallifrey, that was the age kids started at the Academy, training to become Time Lords." Jamie was listening closely; he'd heard stories dating as far back as "that recorder", and a Scottish man named Jamie who'd traveled with him, but his father almost never spoke about his childhood.

"We were taken to look into the Untempered Schism, staring into the depths of time. Be glad you don't have to look into one of those. Well, it might make time traveling easier for you, but it might also melt your brain out your ears." The Doctor grinned and patted Jamie on the back. "I remember being so excited after that - well, after I had gotten over being terrified. But what I was really excited for, was learning to fly a TARDIS. And you know what? We didn't even start learning about them for years!" The Doctor's grin widened, but he could see Jamie looked a little disappointed. He thought the purpose of this talk was to explain that it would be a long time before Jamie was flying anything. But the Doctor plowed on, continuing with: "But I think you can skip all that. Do you want to learn to fly her?"

The expressions on Jamie's face flashed heart-stoppingly quick - and the Doctor couldn't afford to have a heart stop now that he was down to just one. First confusion, then disbelief, then understanding, and finally, pure excitement and joy raced across his face. He nodded his head rapidly. "Yes!"

"I have to warn you, there's a lot to learn," cautioned the Doctor. "It will be years before you can fly it on your own."

"But I can still fly it with you and Mummy, right?" Jamie asked.

"As soon as you start learning."

"Then let's start!" Jamie exclaimed. The Doctor chuckled. "Okay, let's find something simple to start with..." He scanned the console, his eyes darting all over, before finally resting on a set of dials. "Ah, here we go. This, Jamie is the..."

XxxxxXxxxxxXxxxxxXxxxx

Two hours later, the Doctor decided they'd had enough for one day, even though Jamie was still going. "You can't learn too much in one session, or your brain will explode!" he warned.

"No it won't," laughed Jamie.

"It might. You don't want to test it. But really, if you try to learn everything at once you'll forget it all at once too."

"Okay," Jamie conceded, following his dad out into the living room. "Hey, Daddy, can we surprise Mummy and take her somewhere?"

"I thought it was your birthday!" the Doctor teased.

"Yes, and I want to surprise Mum for my birthday," Jamie explained in a patient, logical tone.

"Oh, alright then. Go tell her. Allons-y!" The birthday boy raced out. The Doctor chuckled again, and then started thinking about places they could go. There was a series of caves and waterfalls they could hike through on Nallfin, with a restaurant at the top, but it might be too fancy for Jamie. Then again, the Doctor was sure he could behave himself with the promise of the extraordinary chocolate cake they served there, and he would love the walk up.

"She's getting dressed!" Jamie called, and the Doctor walked out to his and Rose's room, where his wife was sifting through the closet.

"Jamie tells me you were giving him TARDIS lessons," Rose said without turning around.

"And I thought we were going to surprise you."

"He didn't tell me where we're going, though," Rose continued. "Did you forget we were going over to celebrate with my parents?"

The Doctor scratched his head. "Well, actually, I did, yeah. When did you tell me this again?"

"Yesterday," Rose reminded him. "It doesn't matter, I'll just call Mum and tell her we might be a bit late. Where are we going?"

"I was thinking Nallfin, 34th century, probably sometime in July. That restaurant there was still new around that time, and not very crowded yet."

"Did you learn from last time, then?" Rose asked, smiling, as she pulled out a purple blouse and black pants. "That was the longest wait of my life."

"Worth it though," the Doctor said. "And the entertainment they hired for the waiting crowd was very good."

"I still can't believe you actually volunteered to _eat that!" _Rose exclaimed. "After the man set it on fire, too."

"It wasn't bad."

There was a pounding on the door. "Mummy, are you ready to go yet?"

"Just a minute sweetheart!" Rose called.

"Go wait in the TARDIS, we'll be out in a second," the Doctor added. "And don't touch anything!" he warned. They listened to his retreating footsteps before Rose spoke again, now getting changed.

"So really, how much did you teach him?"

"Well," the Doctor said, considering. "He can almost get into the Vortex on his own, with just some help reaching some of the buttons. I don't think he's ready to touch anything in time travel, so we just kept it linear for now, but I told him a bit about how to do it. He's very good at using the turn signals, though."

"Turn signals?" Rose asked incredulously. "Is there often traffic in the Time Vortex?"

"Well, not in this universe. But there used to be," the Doctor said. "I wasn't really sure where to start, to be honest."

Rose chuckled. "I'm sure you did great. C'mon then," she said, finishing tying one sneaker - she'd learned from last time as well, when she'd lost on of her sandals on the trail - "let's go." She pecked the Doctor on the cheek. "Allons-y!" he cried suddenly, taking her hand and pulling her with him to their TARDIS.


	9. Lessons with Mum

p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""So now, just pull this here," Rose said nervously, guiding her son's hands on the levers. "Now those three buttons - red one first, blue, and..." Jamie pressed the buttons in quick succession as the TARDIS rocked around them. It shook a little, and then landed with a thump that would have thrown them to the floor if Rose hadn't been hanging on to the console, with her son pressed between it and her./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"If all had gone well, they had moved two feet to the right and no more than twenty minutes from when they left. It was the safest sequence she knew of to let her nine year old practice without his dad, but she was still nervous. It was one of othe few sequences she knew by heart on the TARDIS controls. She usually pressed buttons and held levers when he told her to, but she could fly on her own if need be. She just wasn't certain she could teach Jamie to fly it without the Doctor./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"But today, her husband wasn't home. There hadn't been much to do at Torchwood, so Rose had left very early. She'd cleaned the kitchen, gotten her hair trimmed, and had a nice relaxing hour in front if the telly before she had to pick up Jamie. He was usually picked up along with Tony and spent an hour or two at his grandparents' doing homework, but Torchwood's irregular schedules left plenty of afternoons for him to spend with his Mum and Dad. Today, his single minded determination to fly the TARDIS had driven Rose to nervously consent, but the first half hour had been only pretend - Jamie acted out the lever pulling and button pressing, happily explaining what everything did to his Mum, only occasionally being corrected - before finally growing bored and asking to do something REAL./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"Well, Rose was able to correct Jamie on the properties of each button in the TARDIS. And she was capable of flying it through simple sequences, and suspected she could achieve greater distances and precision in an emergency. But she would never, ever be comfortable flying without the Doctor, and she imagined it would be a long time before she was comfortable with her son flying it at all. But he HAD been taking sporadic TARDIS lessons for the past year, and she DID know the boring little dematerialization sequence by heart, so she had agreed./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"Now, her son looked gravely up at her. "Did I do it?" he asked./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"She smiled at him, hiding her nervous fear that they might not be where she intended. "Why don't you go check?" she suggested instead. He ducked under her arm and raced out, pulling both doors open wide./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Aw, we didn't go anywhere," he complained, looking from side to side in the living room./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Jamie?" Rose heard the Doctor call frantically from somewhere else in the flat before he rushed into the living room. He looked at the TARDIS and his son standing in the doorway. "Well, where did you go?" he asked./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Nowhere," Jamie pouted./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""We weren't supposed to go anywhere," Rose pointed out, joining him outside the TARDIS. "I told you, we were just moving a few feet left and a bit into the future. Go check the clock in the kitchen." Jamie did as he was asked, and Rose turned to her husband. "How long have you been home?" she asked./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Oh, about an hour," the Doctor said. His expression changed in that quick way he had, one moment very nonchalant and the next stern, almost cross. "You over shot a bit, didn't you?"/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Yeah, a bit," Rose said, acting like it was just a little mistake. Jamie reentered the room and announced, "It's seven thirty! Mum, we were gone four hours!"/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"The Doctor looked at Rose again. "How long did you hold down the blue button?"/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""I thought you aren't supposed to hold it down. It's the red one, then that one, then the green one, one after the other."/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Right," the Doctor said. "But what about the lever, the one sort of swirly one over to the left? And the knobs, the ones down by the edge, did you turn them all three-quarters counterclockwise?"/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Yes," Rose said./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Hmm..." the Doctor looked puzzled. "Did you whack the console a couple of times with the mallet, just for luck?"/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""I did!" Jamie piped up. "I don't think we skipped anything, Dad."/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows, and stepped past Rose into the TARDIS. He spent a few minutes fiddling with some knobs, and looking at some screens that seemed to have recorded the previous movements. Suddenly his face went pink. "I, erm, may have given you the wrong directions." he said sheepishly, with his back still to them. Turning to face them, he asked, "Are you aware that you crashed into Pluto?"/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"Rose's jaw dropped, and then she laughed. "So it's all your fault, then!" Jamie laughed at that./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""Well, there's no need to rub it in," the Doctor said, pretending to be hurt. "Now, then..." - he looked from his wife's face to his son's, building the suspense - "shall we go somewhere?"/p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;""We should," Jamie said seriously. Rose was already closing the doors. The Doctor started suggesting places, with Rose throwing out ideas. Together, the Doctor-Tyler family started working at the console of their TARDIS... running around it, yelling, whacking, pushing buttons and pulling levers, trying to work informative details towards Jamie through the stream of 'technical terms" (pull this rope-thingy, now turn the timey-wimey adjustor... I call this one the wibbly-wobbler control, I'm not sure what the real name is... Well, you know I failed jiggery-pokery!) and falling over each other, while the Doctor had two hands and a foot on the controls and Jamie tried to mimic him, and Rose snuck a few pictures on her phone, and finally all falling down as the engines made their loud, exciting and yet comfortingly familiar noise, and finally racing out, hand in hand in a chain led by Jamie, into their next adventure./p  
p style="margin: 20px 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"It wasn't how a TARDIS was meant to be flown, but a TARDIS wasn't meant to be a family home, either. It was an extension of their house, and often more their home than their everyday flat, and this was just what the Doctor ordered./p 


	10. Family Vacation

The Doctor-Tyler family was a tired, messy wreck. In the TARDIS jump seat, Jamie was almost asleep with his head in Rose's lap. Across from them, the Doctor leaned tiredly on the console, wiping sweat off his forehead with one sleeve. He patted the console in a relieved and thankful manner for getting them out so quickly into the peace of the Vortex.

"Get up, mister," Rose said into Jamie's ear. "Go to bed before you fall asleep here." The ten-year old groaned, but pushed himself up and, keeping his eyes squinted even in the dim console room light, trudged down the hall to his bedroom.

In the console room, the Doctor sat down beside his wife. "Well, that was an eventful vacation."

Rose snorted at the understatement. "Oh, yeah, poachers on Lythure 32 BC, Jamie's broken wrist from netball with the Strandins, and the Cycorax invasion in the twenty third century?" The Doctor look more amused with every word. "Just an average family vacation," Rose concluded, smiling.

"We should have them more often," the Doctor said. "Now that Jamie's older, it doesn't have to be all day trips."

"We've done longer trips before," Rose reminded him. "We just haven't gotten... pulled into so many interesting things. How long has it been anyway? I've lost track."

"Let me see," the Doctor said, considering. "It's been 4, no, 5 weeks for us. So much for a quick trip to the Museum!"

"Well, you can't see the bones of extinct species without going back in time to see the animals," Rose reasoned. "And apparently you can't go back to see the wild life without running into time traveling poachers, too."

"And of course," the Doctor said, "when your son sprains his wrist and you have to wait a few days for it to heal, it's only natural to accidentally wind up in the year 2247 where the Cycorax of this universe are trying to invade."

"And then when you land on Earth, of course it's nowhere near where you need to be, since you have to stop the greedy, telepathic aliens."

"It was only the natural progression of things for us to be gone five weeks when we were trying to go out for an afternoon," the Doctor concluded. He then yawned hugely. "Well, Rose Tyler, I am beat." He stood up, taking her hand with him. "Let's go to bed."

As they walked down the hall, Rose asked, "When we wake up, will we be okay to just show up the morning after we left?"

"Let's see," the Doctor said thoughtfully, "we left on a Tuesday, right?"

"Just after we brought Jamie home from Mum's," Rose confirmed.

"So around four o'clock on 12 April," the Doctor concluded, opening their bedroom door. "Well, that could be a problem."

"We can't just disappear in the middle of the week," Rose said.

"But people are going to notice that we look different from the day before," the Doctor pointed out, pulling off his suit jacket and hanging it in the closet.

"Couldn't we go back to the 12th and get haircuts?" Rose suggested. "It'll hide the fact that our hair grew, and Jamie really needs one by now."

"I was more worried about Jamie's growth spurt."

"It's only an inch," Rose retorted, before peeling her sweaty shirt off over her head and tossing it in the laundry.

"Only?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows quizzically, his hands moving down his shirt as he undid the buttons. "Rose, it doesn't seem like a lot because we've seen him everyday, but to everyone else he'll look taller."

"I know." Rose sighed. "I just don't want to cause problems for him with schoolwork. And Mum won't be happy we went missing."

"You called her, remember? After we left the beach that day." The Doctor's shirt joined Rose's in the hamper.

"Good point," Rose conceded, tossing her husband his pajamas from the bed. "I'm too tired to think straight. I don't want to cause problems at work, either."

"Oh, they'll be fine," the Doctor said. "We'll aim for within a week of where we left and see how it works out. The TARDIS is getting too tired to do any precision work herself, anyways."

He pulled down the covers and got into bed, and Rose joined him. They lay there in silence for a few minutes, listening to the ever present faint noise of the TARDIS, so quiet that you couldn't hear it unless you lay perfectly still and paid attention, and the sound of their weary hearts beating. Then Rose sighed rather loudly, and the Doctor turned over to look at her. "What?" he asked.

She half-smiled."We're being silly. We never used to care, when we got back or who noticed, as long as no one was comin after us for it. And maybe, maybe we're supposed to be all grown up now" - she turned to face her husband and continued conspiratorily - "but I think, as good as domestic's been, we should do a bit more runnin'. Don't you?"

"There's no point in being a grown up if you can't be childish sometimes," the Doctor replied.

"You sound like you're quoting some one."

"I am," he said. "Myself, a long time ago."

There was another pause, an interlude of the TARDIS's breathing. Then: "The scarf?" Rose guessed. The Doctor gave a low chuckle.

"You know me so well." He reached out for her hand under the covers, and she squeezed it a little when he found her. "See you in the morning, Rose," the Doctor said.

"Not if I see you first," Rose retorted. And they drifted off to sleep.


End file.
